29 CFR § 780.158 - Examples of other practices within section 3(f) if requirements are met.

(a) As has been noted above, the term “agriculture” includes other practices performed by a farmer or on a farm as an incident to or in conjunction with the farming operations conducted by such farmer or on such farm in addition to the practices listed in section 3(f). The selling (including selling at roadside stands or by mail order and house to house selling) by a farmer and his employees of his agricultural commodities, dairy products, etc., is such a practice provided it does not amount to a separate business. Other such practices are office work and maintenance and protective work. Section 3(f) includes, for example, secretaries, clerks, bookkeepers, night watchmen, maintenance workers, engineers, and others who are employed by a farmer or on a farm if their work is part of the agricultural activity and is subordinate to the farming operations of such farmer or on such farm. (Damutz v. Pinchbeck, 66 F. Supp. 667, aff'd. 158 F. 2d 882). Employees of a farmer who repair the mechanical implements used in farming, as a subordinate and necessary task incident to their employer's farming operations, are within section 3(f). It makes no difference that the work is done by a separate labor force in a repair shop maintained for the purpose, where the size of the farming operations is such as to justify it. Only employees engaged in the repair of equipment used in performing agricultural functions would be within section 3(f), however; employees repairing equipment used by the employer in industrial or other nonfarming activities would be outside the scope of agriculture. (Maneja v. Waialua, 349 U.S. 254.) The repair of equipment used by other farmers in their farming operations would not qualify as an agricultural practice incident to the farming operations of the farmer employing the repair workers.

(b) The following are other examples of practices which may qualify as “agriculture” under the secondary meaning in section 3(f), when done on a farm, whether done by a farmer or by a contractor for the farmer, so long as they do not relate to farming operations on any other farms: The operation of a cook camp for the sole purpose of feeding persons engaged exclusively in agriculture on that farm; artificial insemination of the farm animals; custom corn shelling and grinding of feed for the farmer; the packing of apples by portable packing machines which are moved from farm to farm packing only apples grown on the particular farm where the packing is being performed; the culling, catching, cooping, and loading of poultry; the threshing of wheat; the shearing of sheep; the gathering and baling of straw.

(c) It must be emphasized with respect to all practices performed on products for which exemption is claimed that they must be performed only on the products produced or raised by the particular farmer or on the particular farm (Mitchell v. Huntsville Nurseries, 267 F. 2d 286; Bowie v. Gonzalez, 117 F. 2d 11; Mitchell v. Hunt, 263 F. 2d 913; NLRB v. Olaa Sugar Co., 242 F. 2d 714; Farmers Reservoir Co. v. McComb, 337 U.S. 755; Walling v. Peacock Corp., 58 F. Supp. 880; Lenroot v. Hazelhurst Mercantile Co., 153 F. 2d 153; Jordan v. Stark Bros. Nurseries, 45 F. Supp. 769).